Time asleep at the wheel

As the President’s approval ratings take a nose dive and the democratically lead Congress wallows in malaise and ambiguity over whose arm to twist for a few votes on health care, one can only wonder what will go wrong next for the newly elected Democrats. Well say no more. Just as the last President was plagued with mishap after mishap, President Obama’s administration finds itself having to deal with disasters both politically and real world on a daily basis. More often than not however of their own fault rather than someone else’s.

Fresh off of having to deal with Harry Reid’s mis-speak and right on the heels of the bankers showing up in town and going, “so what are you going to do about it”, last week the President saw the long held democratically controlled senate seat from Massachusetts fall by the wayside. Few who had any awareness of the race would concede that the Dems thought they had this one in the bag. It wasn’t. Tea Partying, anti Wall Street lending, anti health care for all groups saw they had a chance to win a big one; and they did. The Dems campaign seemed ill conceived and doomed from the start. It’s not your father’s political machine anymore and the Obama group should have known that. Yet despite the loss, loosing this one seat does not signal the end of a health care overhaul, as we know it.

Still controlling a many seat majority the Dems however are acting as if this one seat is the end of the whole overhaul. Oh to be a part of the lock step party where everyone votes the same to get things accomplished. Not going to happen with the Dems though. Liberally minded and conservatively minded people make up the Democratic Party and despite their ever so active bickering between each other, it seems of late that party unity in the end comes up second on every issue. I guess if the Massachusetts seat is not a big enough wake up call on that issue, this may just end up being a very short presidency.

Despite the fact that the media is a buzz with what pundits, talk show hosts and people who get paid to comment on such things think the President and his hand picked administration have done wrong so far, it all boils down to leadership. Few of those offering comments would disagree that while some progress has been made, most of this administration’s efforts to turn things around have yielded few visible positive outcomes. Even fewer if the people dictating what the general public considers success are not Democrats. Fox and the boys of talk radio will never be there with an encouraging word, so don’t expect one.

Without a doubt this administration’s biggest problem is letting others define their successes and failures. Health care has gone from the Democratic initiative that every person in this country deserves to being defined as a privilege, by those that can afford it. Rush has great health insurance and when he gets sick, the system takes great care of him. For the mass majority of America this is not the case. As the Obama administration is learning, when others define your misgivings, you can bet they take on a whole new life of their own! A lesson that will be quite a hard pill to swallow, four years from now under a new Republican president!